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Archer Courts
Residential towers: once a showpiece of architectural modernism, having been frequently realized in cheap mass production after 1945, they are now considered socially deprived areas, and not only in the U.S. As part of the current Hope VI housing program, these residential high-rises are being replaced in favor of small-scale terrace housing developments aiming to upgrade “problem zones” through social diversification. Yet the two housing slabs that make up Archer Courts were able to be saved from demolition by dedicated project developers. A revitalization process followed with minor changes without displacing the primarily Chinese-American residents, many of whom are seniors. The prevailing apartment type—the tworoom tenement with kitchenette—was for the most part maintained, while a renovation of the gallery walkways, including protection against the elements and a colorful, ambient redesign, created multifaceted common spaces. Children are now able to play within eye’s reach of their apartment, and grandparents meet to chat and enjoy the breathtaking view of Chicago’s skyline. No reason to be envious of the newly erected terrace houses at their feet.
Angelika Fitz
Redevelopment of the holding from the nineteen-forties
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 Foto: © Lee Bey, 2008 |
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Archer Courts – hit a bull´s-eye Chicago, November 2008
It is a cool autumn morning at Chicago’s Archer Courts public housing complex. Passersby are bundled up against the chilly winds slicing in from Lake Michigan, located less than two miles to the east. In the past, these winds would batter Archer Courts. Above the ground floor of the seven-story buildings, apartments were accessed by open-air gallery walkways with chain-link fences for guardrails. Residents had to walk a gauntlet of stiff winds, rain, snow, or whatever else nature had in the offing, not to mention trash and the occasional homeless squatter looking for a place to sleep.
But those days are now only a memory at Archer Courts. The complex—consisting of two separate buildings about 120 feet apart—and their grounds were rehabilitated nearly ten years ago, and the galleries were enclosed with a transparent glass curtain wall that turned the foreboding walkways into comfortable, colorful, and weatherproof places where residents gather, relax, and play.
Built in 1951, Archer Courts—located on Archer Avenue in the Chinatown community, three miles south of downtown—was a symbol of Chicago’s public housing problems, although it never achieved international infamy as did the city’s substantially larger and notorious Cabrini-Green or Robert Taylor Homes developments. Though built with the best of intentions, over the years the buildings grew ragged; crime increased. “Archer Courts was like an outsider, even though it was in our community,” one Chinatown resident said. But salvation came in 1999 when the 147-unit development was included in a sweeping, federally funded plan to demolish or improve public housing in Chicago. Called “The Plan for Transformation” and funded by the federal Hope VI program, the move wiped away the Chicago Housing Authority’s massive developments—such as Robert Taylor, and most of Cabrini-Green—and replaced them with mixedincome communities. Archer Courts was purchased from the CHA for US$650,000 by the private Chicago Community Development Corporation. The new owners secured US$6.5 million in federal funds to renovate the building—a cost that was cheaper than demolition...
Lee Bey
for entire text see catalogue
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